The More We Grow, The Harder We Fall
For the second unit of my Food for Thought Humanities class, Death, we learned more about the history of food. We went on a Field Experience to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and we learned more about the diversity of plants and polycultures and monocultures. For this Action Project, we were asked to write a paper, and then make a video on it. Below is my video, and my paper.
Global population is a growing problem. The global food system is the system that keeps the world fed. It encompasses global food trade routes, agriculture, shipping, among other things. It’s threatened by a growing population because we can’t grow enough food and supply it fast enough if our population grows out of control. Population growth is a, well, growing problem, and we need to find solutions for it as soon as we possibly can. If policies stay the way they are now, civilization very well could collapse before we even get to 2050.
Population growth is quickly becoming a big problem. We aren’t going to be able to sustain such a large amount of people. We just won’t be able to grow food fast enough to keep up with our population. The situation is kind of spiraling out of control at this point. China is currently the fastest-growing country in the world, population-wise, with India not far behind them. Both are already getting overpopulated, and their situation is only worsening as time goes on, if they don’t do something about it. To restate, overpopulation is a big threat to the global food system. This is because, according to The Hill, “Feeding the 7.3 billion inhabitants of our planet today is daunting. An increasingly complex, globalized network of actors plays a role in the production, harvesting, processing, sales and consumption of food. This complexity — among major demographic shifts — increasingly threatens the health of the world’s people and our planet.” So, we basically have to change food policies now, before it’s too late and we’re overpopulated and starving to death. “Through technical innovations, we have expanded agricultural production during the past century to meet food needs. However, hunger remains a serious problem for approximately 800 million people worldwide (FAO 2000a; Arrow et al. 1995; Daily et al. 1998; Goklany 1998), due in part to limitations in food distribution to areas of need”, says the University of California. Food is also starting to have to be genetically modified, just so that farmers can grow it at the rates we need it to grow at to supply all the demand for them. We need to find a solution to the problem that is our growing population, and some think that that solution may very well be hidden in history, in our past.
Population growth has only recently really become a problem. Historically, world populations have not been very large until the past century or so. One civilization/era that faced a similar problem to population growth was China. With their rapidly growing population, they had more and more mouths to feed, and nowadays have to resort to importing foods and genetically modifying their food, similar to many other large countries around the world.
Looking back on China, we can learn much from their mistakes and make sure to improve upon the points where they failed. They obviously did not address the problem, as the main cause of their downfall was, in fact, overpopulation. The results were that they collapsed, many people dying out, others fleeing elsewhere, their whole society crumbling around them. We can learn from history by making sure to not repeat the same mistakes that they made, and maybe even learn from their successes. We can regulate the amount of children that people are allowed to have, we can come up with new ways to grow and supply food, and finally, we can come up with more renewable sources for energy and materials.
In conclusion, our population is growing too fast, and we need to start regulating its growth somehow or we’re going to starve ourselves. The demand will become too great for fuels, food, water, and supplies. I think that my recommendations will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals because it’ll solve the one about world hunger, if we do it correctly. We could all be dead in a few decades. Not just because of global warming, but because of our population growing too fast for us to be able to feed it.
Deutsche Welle. “Sustainable Food for Everyone? The Challenge of Our Century | DW | 11.07.2017.” DW.COM, www.dw.com/en/environment-world-population-day-agriculture-sustainability-food-waste-food-security-overpopulation/a-39628974.
Eliaz, Shay. “World's Population Is Outgrowing Its Food System.” TheHill, The Hill, 24 May 2017, thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/334812-worlds-population-is-outgrowing-its-food-system.
Emmott, Stephen. “Though Climate Change Is a Crisis, the Population Threat Is Even Worse | Stephen Emmott.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Dec. 2015, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/climate-change-population-crisis-paris-summit.
“Feeding 9 Billion.” National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/feeding-9-billion/?beta=true.
Gillespie. “Archive.” California Agriculture, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources, calag.ucanr.edu/Archive/?article=ca.v054n05p47.
Lauterwasser, David B. “The Collapse of Global Civilization Has Begun – David B Lauterwasser – Medium.” Medium, Augmenting Humanity, 14 Nov. 2017, medium.com/@FeunFooPermaKra/the-collapse-of-global-civilization-has-begun-b527c649754c.
Population growth is quickly becoming a big problem. We aren’t going to be able to sustain such a large amount of people. We just won’t be able to grow food fast enough to keep up with our population. The situation is kind of spiraling out of control at this point. China is currently the fastest-growing country in the world, population-wise, with India not far behind them. Both are already getting overpopulated, and their situation is only worsening as time goes on, if they don’t do something about it. To restate, overpopulation is a big threat to the global food system. This is because, according to The Hill, “Feeding the 7.3 billion inhabitants of our planet today is daunting. An increasingly complex, globalized network of actors plays a role in the production, harvesting, processing, sales and consumption of food. This complexity — among major demographic shifts — increasingly threatens the health of the world’s people and our planet.” So, we basically have to change food policies now, before it’s too late and we’re overpopulated and starving to death. “Through technical innovations, we have expanded agricultural production during the past century to meet food needs. However, hunger remains a serious problem for approximately 800 million people worldwide (FAO 2000a; Arrow et al. 1995; Daily et al. 1998; Goklany 1998), due in part to limitations in food distribution to areas of need”, says the University of California. Food is also starting to have to be genetically modified, just so that farmers can grow it at the rates we need it to grow at to supply all the demand for them. We need to find a solution to the problem that is our growing population, and some think that that solution may very well be hidden in history, in our past.
Population growth has only recently really become a problem. Historically, world populations have not been very large until the past century or so. One civilization/era that faced a similar problem to population growth was China. With their rapidly growing population, they had more and more mouths to feed, and nowadays have to resort to importing foods and genetically modifying their food, similar to many other large countries around the world.
Looking back on China, we can learn much from their mistakes and make sure to improve upon the points where they failed. They obviously did not address the problem, as the main cause of their downfall was, in fact, overpopulation. The results were that they collapsed, many people dying out, others fleeing elsewhere, their whole society crumbling around them. We can learn from history by making sure to not repeat the same mistakes that they made, and maybe even learn from their successes. We can regulate the amount of children that people are allowed to have, we can come up with new ways to grow and supply food, and finally, we can come up with more renewable sources for energy and materials.
In conclusion, our population is growing too fast, and we need to start regulating its growth somehow or we’re going to starve ourselves. The demand will become too great for fuels, food, water, and supplies. I think that my recommendations will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals because it’ll solve the one about world hunger, if we do it correctly. We could all be dead in a few decades. Not just because of global warming, but because of our population growing too fast for us to be able to feed it.
Works Cited:
Askew, Katy. “Population Growth 'a Threat to Food Quality'.” Foodnavigator.com, William Reed Business Media Ltd., 10 Nov. 2017, www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2017/11/10/Population-growth-a-threat-to-food-quality.
Deutsche Welle. “Sustainable Food for Everyone? The Challenge of Our Century | DW | 11.07.2017.” DW.COM, www.dw.com/en/environment-world-population-day-agriculture-sustainability-food-waste-food-security-overpopulation/a-39628974.
Eliaz, Shay. “World's Population Is Outgrowing Its Food System.” TheHill, The Hill, 24 May 2017, thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/334812-worlds-population-is-outgrowing-its-food-system.
Emmott, Stephen. “Though Climate Change Is a Crisis, the Population Threat Is Even Worse | Stephen Emmott.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Dec. 2015, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/climate-change-population-crisis-paris-summit.
“Feeding 9 Billion.” National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/feeding-9-billion/?beta=true.
Gillespie. “Archive.” California Agriculture, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources, calag.ucanr.edu/Archive/?article=ca.v054n05p47.
Lauterwasser, David B. “The Collapse of Global Civilization Has Begun – David B Lauterwasser – Medium.” Medium, Augmenting Humanity, 14 Nov. 2017, medium.com/@FeunFooPermaKra/the-collapse-of-global-civilization-has-begun-b527c649754c.
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